State Treasurer Steve Grossman visited the LaLiberte and Merrill elementary schools in Raynham on Friday morning, checking out the leaky roofs that plague the buildings.

The visit comes after the school buildings were selected for an accelerated repair program through the Massachusetts School Building Authority, which would finance 55 percent of a construction project to replace the roofs in time for the school year that begins in 2013. As state treasurer, Grossman is also the chairman of the MSBA.

“Based on the tour I just saw, the fact that rain is coming in on inclement days, this project can’t happen a moment too soon,” Grossman said. “I’m thrilled that by the end of next summer both of these schools will have new roofs. ... This program has had dramatic impact on ability of towns like Raynham to be able to move forward aggressively and finance repairs.”

Raynham school administrators said that they are very grateful to have the roof construction project financed through the accelerated repair program.

“Our students are going to benefit from this because they will get safe learning environments that aren’t leaking,” said Bridgewater-Raynham Regional School District Superintendent Jacqueline Forbes.

Forbes said school facilities workers are currently patching the roofs as much as possible. During rainy days in recent months, leaks in hallways and classrooms have forced workers at the schools to remove ceiling tiles and place bins on the floor to catch the leaks.

There are about 300 students at Merrill Elementary School and about 500 at LaLiberte Elementary School

In August, a Special Town Meeting in Raynham approved $40,000 to be appropriate for a feasibility and a schematic design as the starting point for the roof repair project. The overall roof construction project would still have to be approved at a future Town Meeting.

Raynham Selectman Joseph Pacheco toured the schools as part of a group with Grossman.

“We’re certainly excited to have the treasurer here and to get a first-hand look at why we were working so diligently to obtain these SBA funds,” Pacheco said.

“We do the best we can on a daily basis to maintain these buildings but when it gets to certain point you have to have some assistance. That’s when the state needs to step in and the treasurer has been a great partner for that.”

Al Baroncelli, facilities manager for Bridgewater-Raynham, said the roof repairs will make his job easier.

“It’s great that the roofs are going to be done,” Baroncelli said. “It coudn’t come at a better time. It’ll be a load off my back when it’s done.”

Heidi Letendre, principal at Merrill, said that the roof repair project is a great opportunity.

Page 2 of 2 - “The hallways aren’t safe with all the leaks in the roof,” Letendre said. “We don’t want it to get worse. It would be a major problem.”

Grossman, a Democrat, said that the accelerated repair program was another example of how the federal stimulus has helped the local economy.

“You hear a lot of comments about how the stimulus program didn’t work, didn’t create jobs and was just a failure,” Grossman said. “In the middle of the worst economic times in 75 years, they decided in Washington that it would be tremendously advantageous to states to have a program created that would allow school construction authorities to have money that would be reduced in cost. They allowed us to change the law to allow us to sell up to $300 million of what’s called qualified school construction bonds, which we sold in two bites... All of the interest on all of these bonds in the entire 17 year history of the bonds, all that interest would be credited back to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in full. So essentially we would have $300 million of money costing us no interest in 17 years.

“What did we do with the money, we created the accelerated repair program,” Grossman said. “What’s the most important thing that schools all over Massachusetts need? So many schools all over the commonwealth have a problem with their roofs or boilers, not working property or no energy efficient. or windows.”

Grossman said $240 million of the $300 million was used for more than 200 projects similar to the roof repair project in Raynham. Grossman said all of this work was a boon for a hungry construction industry, creating jobs, while saving money for school districts because construction costs have been relatively low.

“In construction trades people doing this kind of work had unemployment at 30, 35 and 40 percent,” Grossman said. “This program created thousands of hours of work, legitimate work, so we could have better schools, more energy efficient schools, because we did it at a time when unemployment was so high in the construction trades, we got absolutely fabulous bids. They almost all came in way under budget.”